Larry, you don't need post processing hahaha if you play 1080p or above even AA isn't all that needed...but post processing is just icing on the cake. and as Shakey noted this is a short game cause this time the CELL guys are not that hard...well, i only played 20 mins of it so i don't know but right off the bat it's a lot easier than Crysis 2 where on normal they kicked your ass if you weren't careful!

How would you all describe the gameplay and storyline? I've been pretty disappointed with the reviews seeing as how much I enjoyed the first two games (wasn't a fan of Warhead, though). I actually like the fact that the game is much shorter, so that doesn't bother me. Also: are quick-time events back?

So far, the storyline ties in rather neatly to that of Crysis 2 (and even to the "Legion" novel/e-book) - the issue is that each is only part of the story. Prophet (basically Alcatraz-as-Prophet) has part of the story, Sikes has part of the story, and Rasch and Claire have part of the story - the WHOLE story is even bigger than the sum of the parts.

Second, Sikes doesn't know about what happened to Prophet's body in Crysis 2 - and Alcatraz has kept with the legal fiction that he is, in fact, dead.

As to what happened to Sikes' suit, SIKES mentioned what happened way back at the beginning - he was skinned out of it while alive. (That was Lockhart and Hargreave's plan for first Prophet, and then Alcatraz, in Crysis 2.)

It sounds like the whole narrative is coming from the POV of the Prophet personality in the suit - not Alcatraz-as-Prophet. (That explains the third-person narrative.) The suit, and Alcatraz' body, are becoming a single life form - which is keeping the identity of the original Prophet, Laurence Barnes. (Barnes imprinted big-time on the suit - which actually makes sense.)

I think that all the quibbling over plot has to do with the disconnect from the characters in the original Crysis (Nomad in particular) - not necessarily Warhead, as Sikes fills in some of that. (Why didn't Sikes fill in ALL of it? Remember, as far as Sikes himself is aware, Prophet is still alive - he's not aware of the body change in the suit. Claire is NOT Tara Strickland - one of those living souls that IS aware of the body switch. If RASCH knows, he isn't telling. Anyone. He had the opportunity to tell Claire OR Sikes, but said nothing to either. That means he didn't know - or is refusing to tell for reasons of his own.) Basically it APPEARS to be a plot hole - but it isn't.)

Yeah, I've done any secondary objective I've been given, they're quite useful so I'm not sure why people would want to skip them.

My problem was that 90% of the time, I didn't even notice there was a secondary objective. And then once I crossed the point of no return, I would see it X'ed out, and was like, "well damn it."

I beat it on the 2nd to hardest difficulty. The most troubling levels were the last ones, and they were only troublesome due to the amount of enemies and how strong they are. You go from basically being a god and killing everything, to all of a sudden losing your powers and in way to deep over your head. I finally found the "sweet spots" to hack the alien turrets, and those levels became a breeze.

The story is very broken up, but if you read all the data logs, it is really good for a FPS story. If you have played all the Crysis games, this wraps everything up really nicely.The music in this game is just perfect. I don't know why, but it really made the events that were happening that much more meaningful. And the end was great. I read that Crytek says that this isn't the last Crysis... So I'm very eager to see where it goes from here.And the voice acting was top notch. Maybe it's just me, but I found myself really rooting for Prophet, and at the last few levels, when he starts going all out on the aliens, I really enjoyed his lines. It was very exhilarating. I would have loved if this game had 2 endings...

Spoiler

the good one we get, and an alternate bad ending where you end up becoming the new Alpha Ceph.

Spoiler

I loved how at the very end, it pans out and you see that you are back on the very 1st island that Crysis 1 took place on.

Man, this games graphics settings really are bizarre. As I chronicled earlier, I had everything on Medium for the most part with a few things on High. Well the water was looking super muddy for me, so I wanted to see what turning it up to Very High looked like. Not only did it look 100 times better, like I could actually see in it, but my FPS actually went up!!! I then turned shadows up to High, and holy ****, it looks so much better, and NO hit in performance at all. Now I see all these reflections off the water I was not seeing, and again, somehow the game looks better but seems to also be running better?? It is truly ass backwards, and it is almost like the game was under performing because I had the graphics settings lower than they should be. Just really odd.

I also noticed Origin downloaded a 250 or so MB patch before. Anyone know what that was about? Maybe it improved High and above graphic performance?

Larry, you don't need post processing hahaha if you play 1080p or above even AA isn't all that needed...but post processing is just icing on the cake. and as Shakey noted this is a short game cause this time the CELL guys are not that hard...well, i only played 20 mins of it so i don't know but right off the bat it's a lot easier than Crysis 2 where on normal they kicked your ass if you weren't careful!

However, if you can't run all-out, consider SMAA - for me, oddly enough, 1x SMAA has better performance than no AA. (Again, HD5450 - a discrete GPU so hooptie, I usually HAVE to turn AA off to get decent performance at all - in any game, regardless of resolution. Therefore AA, even SMAA, performing better than no AA flies in the face of usual performance, let alone logic.)

Man, this games graphics settings really are bizarre. As I chronicled earlier, I had everything on Medium for the most part with a few things on High. Well the water was looking super muddy for me, so I wanted to see what turning it up to Very High looked like. Not only did it look 100 times better, like I could actually see in it, but my FPS actually went up!!! I then turned shadows up to High, and holy ****, it looks so much better, and NO hit in performance at all. Now I see all these reflections off the water I was not seeing, and again, somehow the game looks better but seems to also be running better?? It is truly ass backwards, and it is almost like the game was under performing because I had the graphics settings lower than they should be. Just really odd.

I also noticed Origin downloaded a 250 or so MB patch before. Anyone know what that was about? Maybe it improved High and above graphic performance?

I'm hardly the expert on this game, but higher settings could use DirectCompute/OpenCL stuff instead of standard functions.

I'm hardly the expert on this game, but higher settings could use DirectCompute/OpenCL stuff instead of standard functions.

Quite possible - and neither is supported by any version of DirectX before 11, while all DX11 GPUs support either one or the other. (Yes - believe it or not, even Mister Hooptie, AKA HD5450, explicitly supports DirectCompute.)

I'm hardly the expert on this game, but higher settings could use DirectCompute/OpenCL stuff instead of standard functions.

That makes a lot of sense, and is actually kind of along the lines of what I thought it was, it was actually pushing my card to perform better. Regardless of what it is I will take it. It is amazing how much better it looks and how it is running really good now, get pretty much a constant 60 FPS no matter what.

Everyone is posting about how well the game performs, but I have a Core i5-750, 7870 "Tahiti LE" and 8 GB RAM and this game still isn't 60 FPS @ Low (everything) details @ 1680x1050. About 1-2% of the scenes hover at 50-55 FPS.

It still looks fine (excellent, in fact), but having to use Low on a very decent system is quite ridiculous.

Setting everything to Medium makes the average frame rate around 30 FPS.